Month: March 2015

I’m using a workflow from Apple’s KB article HT201372. It works really well and doesn’t require any 3rd party scripts. You will need to download the installer for either Yosemite or Mavericks from the AppStore. If you have already installed yours you can download another copy by looking in your Purchases. If it is currently on your HD, you can dump it and install the latest by going to Macintosh HD and looking in the…

Since Apple has opened the Device Enrollment Program to school districts, the need for individual students to create free Apple IDs has diminished some. If you haven’t explored the DEP and your district has more than a cart of iPads or MacBooks, you should seriously consider doing so. Apple brings many management features that makes these devices much easier to manage. You can find out more here: https://www.apple.com/education/it/dep/. If you still have the need to create…

Finding photos for class projects can be extremely time consuming and distracting for students. Often, they seem to focus more on the pictures than on the content of the lesson. Creating collections of photos for them to choose from is one way to scaffold instructional tech activities to make them take less time. I like to do this on my phone and use the photo sharing feature in iOS to make the media available to…

The Importance of Patience Working on servers this week, a humbling and frustrating experience, reminded me of the importance of patience when working with people. I found myself in a similar position as many of my teachers when learning to integrate technology in their classes in a meaningful way. I spent 3 days with systems engineers and my account manager at JAMF Software working on preparing for our middle school iPad roll out. Initially everything…

Shaped by Data Teacher professional development, like anything these days, has been shown to be more effective if it is based on data. Data driven goals and objectives can form the subject or basis of PD and help make that connection between professional practice and student need. In Texas, I particularly like the work of Ervin Knezek and the Lead4ward team in this area. What they have done is to help school districts by developing templates…

Effective Teacher Professional Development Must Be Intensive, On-going, and Long Term Amen! The one thing that seems to be constant in education, is that nothing seems to be constant in education. Veteran teachers know that if they wait long enough, the current district or campus initiative du jour will pass and they can get back to doing what ever they did before. What we as administrators often forget is that the greater the degree of change that…

Connected to Classroom Practice, Pedagogy, and Content This seems self evident, but I’ve attended many PD sessions and have heard feedback from colleagues who attended tech trainings that were not explicitly targeted to their classroom practice, pedagogy and content. The TPACK framework is a good visual model of how the areas of technology, pedagogy, and content area knowledge intersect to form tech rich classroom practice. Many effective trainings will fall into intersections of any…

On the Job or Job-Embedded Training Who hasn’t attended a tech workshop at a conference, been all fired up to implement some of the new ideas, only to have difficulty making them work in the classroom? The closer that a training is to the context, location, and need of the teacher, the more likely that learning will be generalized and extend into actual classroom practice. Professional development needs to be part of the teacher’s daily…

Characteristics of Effective #EdTech Teacher Professional Development I’ve been studying over the past two years how to best create, deliver, use, and abuse #EdTech Professional Development in our district. Like anything, sometimes you eat the bear… and sometimes the bear eats you. That’s why there’s this thing called research that people do, and it really helps to inform you of what works and what doesn’t. So hopefully, this little post will share some of what…

Tuesday’s tech tips is a collection of resources on the topics related to instructional technology for teachers in Sanger ISD. You might find something there that you like or is helpful. If the page doesn’t load, click here for external link: